“You mean Wil ’s been cheating you out of money?” Tessa was surprised. Wil could be awful and cruel, she thought, but somehow she had thought his cruelty of a more refined order than that. Less petty. And to do that to Jem, of al people . . .
“Quite the opposite. The drugs cost much more than he said they did. He must have been making up the difference somehow.” Stil frowning, he slid the dagger into his belt. “I know him better than anyone else in the world,” he said matter-of-factly. “And yet stil I find that Wil has secrets that surprise me.”
Tessa thought of the letters stuffed into the Dickens book, and what she intended to say to Wil about it when she saw him again. “Indeed,” she said. “Though it is not so much a mystery, is it? Wil would do anything for you—”
“I’m not sure I would take it quite that far.” Jem’s tone was wry.
“Of course he would,” said Tessa. “Anyone would. You’re so kind and so good—”
She broke off, but Jem’s eyes had already widened. He looked surprised, as if he were not used to such praise, but surely he must be, Tessa thought in confusion. Surely everyone who knew him knew how lucky they were. She felt her cheeks begin to warm again, and cursed herself. What was going on?
A faint rattle came from the window; Jem turned after a moment’s pause. “That wil be Cyril,” he said, and there was a slight, rough undercurrent to his voice. “I—I asked him to bring the carriage around. We had better go.”
Tessa nodded, wordless, and fol owed him from the room.
When Jem and Tessa emerged from the Institute, the wind was stil gusting into the courtyard, sending dried leaves skittering in circles like faerie dancers. The sky was heavy with a yel ow fog, the moon a gold disk behind it. The Latin words over the Institute’s gates seemed to glow, picked out by the moonlight: We are dust and shadows.
Cyril, waiting with the carriage and the two horses, Balios and Xanthos, looked relieved to see them; he helped Tessa up into the carriage, Jem fol owing her, and then swung himself up into the driver’s seat. Tessa, sitting opposite Jem, watched with fascination as he drew both the dagger and the stele from his belt; holding the dagger in his right hand, he drew a rune on the back of that hand with the tip of his stele. It looked to Tessa like al Marks looked, a ripple of unreadable waving lines, circling around to connect with one another in bold black patterns.
He gazed down at his hand for a long moment, then shut his eyes, his face stil with intense concentration. Just as Tessa’s nerves began to sing with impatience, his eyes flew open. “Brick Lane, near Whitechapel High Street,” he said, half to himself; returning the dagger and stele to his belt, he leaned out the window, and she heard him repeat the words to Cyril. A moment later Jem was back in the carriage, shutting the window against the cold air, and they were sliding and bumping forward over the cobblestones.
Tessa took a deep breath. She had been eager to look for Wil al day, worried about him, wondering where he was—but now that they were rol ing into the dark heart of London, al she could feel was dread.
FIERCE MIDNIGHT
Fierce midnights and famishing morrows,
A nd the loves that complete and control
A ll the joys of the flesh, all the sorrows
That wear out the soul.
—Algernon Charles Swinburne, “Dolores”
Tessa kept the curtain on her side of the carriage pul ed back, her eyes on the glass of the window, as they rol ed along Fleet Street toward Ludgate Hil . The yel ow fog had thickened, and she could make out little through it—the dark shapes of people hurrying to and fro, the hazy words of advertising signs painted on the sides of buildings. Every once in a while the fog would part and she would get a clear glimpse of something—a little girl carrying bunches of wilting lavender, leaning against a wal , exhausted; a knife grinder rol ing his cart wearily homeward; a sign for Bryant and May’s Lucifer Matches looming suddenly out of the gloom.
“Chuckaways,” said Jem. He was leaning back against the seat across from her, his eyes bright in the dimness. She wondered if he had taken some of the drug before they left, and if so, how much.
“Pardon?”
He mimed the act of striking a match, blowing it out, and tossing the remainder over his shoulder. “That’s what they cal matches here— chuckaways, because you toss them aside after one use. It’s also what they cal the girls who work at the match factories.”
Tessa thought of Sophie, who could easily have become one of those “chuckaways,” if Charlotte hadn’t found her. “That’s cruel.”
“It’s a cruel part of the city we’re going into. The East End. The slums.” He sat forward. “I want you to be careful, and to stay close by me.”
“Do you know what Wil ’s doing there?” Tessa asked, half-afraid of the answer. They were passing by the great bulk of St. Paul’s now, looming up above them like a giant’s glimmering marble tombstone.